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Objective:The role of baseline and post-treatment standardized uptake value (SUVmax) values in predicting pathological response in patients with breast cancer after neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC).Materials and Methods:Thirty patients with invasive ductal breast cancer were included in this retrospective study. F-18 fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) positron emission tomography/computerized tomography (PET/CT) examinations were performed before and after NAC. Pretreatment SUVmax (SUVmax I), post-treatment SUVmax (SUVmax II) and ΔSUVmax values of primary breast cancer were obtained. Breast tumor pathology preparations were examined for the evaluation of tumor response according to the Miller and Payne classification. Patients were grouped as responding to treatment (pCR) and unresponsive to treatment (nonpCR). In all analyses, p

Background. Gastrointestinal motility and serum thyroid hormone levels are closely related. Our aim was to analyze whether there is a disorder in esophagogastric motor functions as a result of hypothyroidism. Materials and Methods. The study group included 30 females (mean age ± SE 45.17 ± 2.07 years) with primary hypothyroidism and 10 healthy females (mean age ± SE 39.40 ± 3.95 years). All cases underwent esophagogastric endoscopy and scintigraphy. For esophageal scintigraphy, dynamic imaging of esophagus motility protocol, and for gastric emptying scintigraphy, anterior static gastric images were acquired. Results. The mean esophageal transit time (52.56 ± 4.07 sec for patients; 24.30 ± 5.88 sec for controls; P=.02) and gastric emptying time (49.06 ± 4.29 min for the hypothyroid group; 30.4 ± 4.74 min for the control group; P=.01) were markedly increased in cases of hypothyroidism. Conclusion. Hypothyroidism prominently reduces esophageal and gastric motor activity and can cause gastrointestinal dysfunction.

Objectives Patients with head and neck cancer (HNC) have a high risk of sarcopenia, which is associated with poor prognosis. Skeletal-muscle area and index at the third lumbar (L3) vertebra level (L3MA and L3MI) are recommended for the detection of sarcopenia. However, L3 level is not included in many imaging protocols and there are no data for optimal levels and cutoffs for the diagnosis of sarcopenia in head and neck computed tomography (HNCT) scans. Our aim was to assess the relationship between cervical paravertebral muscle values and L3MI and to investigate optimal level to diagnose sarcopenia on HNCTs. Methods Patients with HNC (n=159) who underwent positron emission tomography-CT for tumor staging were retrospectively analyzed. On CT images, paravertebral and sternocleidomastoid muscle areas at second (C2), third (C3), and fourth (C4) cervical vertebrae levels (C2MA, C3MA, C4MA, SCMA) and L3MA were measured. Cross-sectional areas were normalized for stature (muscle area/height square) and muscle index (C2MI, C3MI, C4MI, SCMI, L3MI) values were obtained. Spearman correlation and linear regression analyses were used for assessing correlations. To calculate the diagnostic performance of SCMI, C2MI, C3MI, and C4MI for the diagnosis of sarcopenia with respect to the cutoffs of L3MI, receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis was used. Results Males had significantly higher muscle areas than females. Although C2MI, C3MI, C4MI, and SCMI values all showed very strong and significant correlation with L3MI (P